Blogger, Google’s 11-year-old blogging platform, will be kicking it into high gear in 2011 with a few improvements. Premiered this year at SXSW, Blogger will be launching a completely overhauled user interface, putting to rest an interface that has begun to show its age. Following on its heels will be new mobile themes, and a new content discovery engine, “that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading.” Google promises that there will be more to come, but they are not ready to reveal anything else at this time. 2011 is starting to sound like a big year for the blogging giant, and it will certainly be interesting to see what comes of it.

Back on January 22nd, Google notified its Blogger users that effective March 26th, support for publishing via FTP would be discontinued. This announcement prompted at least one individual who relied on this feature to switch from Blogger to WordPress. However, the journey from one platform to another presented some obstacles. Kent Newsome has published a six part series that describes the trials and tribulations of the move including export/import, file size limitations, retaining the URL structure, theme hacking, and more. Congrats to Kent for having a successful move and welcome to the WordPress community. Parts 1 and 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Google Open Source Blog: Google Blog Converters 1.0 Released: Blogger (now) allows users the ability to export all contents of their blog, the Data Liberation team would like to announce the Google Blog Converters project. This new Open Source project provides the ability to easily move blog posts and comments from service to service. This initial release provides Python libraries and runnable scripts that convert between the export formats of Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType, and WordPress. This is after Google decided to allow Blogger users to import and export data from Blogger.

Redirect from Blogger to WordPress If you are moving your blog from Blogger to WordPress (hosted) this might be a useful solution for you. Step by step, easy to follow instructions. Thanks Freshblogger

About the Author

James

James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.